


we rise and we fall and we break

by thelilacfield



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Survivor Guilt, The Author Regrets Everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 14:04:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14450835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilacfield/pseuds/thelilacfield
Summary: Why are they the ones left alive? Why is this group of shattered individuals are important? What chance does a broken group who rely on tech for their powers can possibly have against the gauntlet?They've only had a week since Thanos tore into their world and ripped it apart. How can they carry this weight for a lifetime?





	we rise and we fall and we break

**A/N:** I needed catharsis. Lyrics in the title from  _Wait For It_ from Hamilton. Add it to your suffering playlist now

* * *

Shuri is waiting at the doors for them, bruised and bloodied but very much alive, letting Steve breathe in relief. The silence is oppressive as they limp towards her, stumbling under the weight of their own grief, and Steve looks away when Okoye goes to Shuri, her face a mask of sadness.

They stand helpless at Shuri's horrified scream, Okoye desperately trying to comfort her in soothing Wakandan none of them understand. Natasha curls into Steve's side, hiding her face in his shoulder, and he cups a hand over the small of her back, unable to find the words. He can only glance at the team he has left, Rhodey stoic as a statue, Rocket clutching at his gun and so silent, Bruce stepped out of the Hulkbuster with tears carving clean paths through the dust and dirt on his face and Thor with jaw gritted, Vision's body in his arms.

He's looking for grief, searching himself to find the tears that Bruce is freely crying, that Natasha's shoulders are shaking with, that he can see glittering on Rocket's fur. But there's nothing left in him. Not after watching so many people simply turn to dust and disappear on the wind. Just shadows and emptiness where his brokenness should be.

"Thor?" Rhodey speaking seems to shatter everything like glass, and Thor looks up at him with his mismatched eyes dark with grief. "Maybe we should...should we bury him?"

"No," Bruce says, voice cracked by tears. "I want to try saving him."

"Bruce, you saw-"

"I know what I saw!" Bruce snaps, tears spilling over. "I saw a madman rip the stone out of Vision's head! I saw him turn everyone to dust with a snap of his fingers! But I think...Shuri," he turns to the grieving girl, "you figured out a way, didn't you?"

"I did," she says, very quiet. Broken. "But I don't know if we can help. It may be too late."

"We have to  _try_ ," Bruce says, almost feverish. "After...everything, if we can get him back he's the most power we have."

"We could put the body in cryofreeze," Shuri says, swiping the backs of her hands across her eyes, smearing tear tracks across her skin. "Come with me, Doctor Banner. If nothing else, we can preserve him."

"C'mon, Thor," Bruce says, and the two of them follow Shuri into the palace, and Steve looks away from Vision's greyed-out cape swinging with Thor's footsteps.

"What do we do, Cap?" Rhodey's question forces Steve to lift his head, to face the light sky on a world turned upside-down, and he cracks apart as he turns to look at Rhodey, hopeless.

"I don't know."

* * *

After a day of messing around with all their comms, Rocket manages to piece something together and send a signal out, searching for anyone else alive. He only finds two responders.

The rush of relief nearly sends Rhodey crashing to the floor when Tony walks through the Wakandan palace gates, alive, and he can't help the force of the hug he gives him. But Tony barely returns it, and he's shaking, looking around the room for familiar faces. "Where is everyone?" he asks, voice muted, and Rhodey lowers his eyes and can only shake his head.

"They're dead, Tony," he says, and Tony visibly blanches, eyes shining with tears. "All of them. They turned to dust."

The woman who walks behind Tony looks at Rocket, and the two gaze at each other for a long silent moment. "Are we the only ones left?" Rocket asks, his voice breaking, and she nods. "I still hate you."

"The feeling's mutual," she snaps, and stalks out of the room.

"Strange said it was the only way," Tony says, vague and slurred, as if he's barely even aware of everyone else in the room. "He said there was only one way we can win." He looks around at them, Steve and Natasha quiet on the couch, Rocket staring at a plant growing from its pot in the corner with heartbreak in his eyes, and brokenly forces out the words, "But how can it be this?" before he starts to cry.

* * *

Bruce doesn't leave the lab, working feverishly with Shuri, glowing simulations floating around the air like clouds in a blue sky, trying to unlock the key. Everything can be solved. Nothing is permanent, not in their world. Watching so many people turn to dust tells him that.

Steve tries to cry, but still hasn't. He works, talking to Okoye, trying to come up with some sort of plan, anything. They're the Avengers. They're meant to save the world. They've failed.

Tony familiarises himself with Wakanda, a ghost in the palace corridors, muttering under his breath, trying to understand. He cries out at night in snatched minutes of sleep, screaming the names of the dead.

Natasha tries to get in contact with SHIELD, to see if there are allies out there they don't know about. Her scream when she finds out that Maria Hill and Nick Fury were just two of the millions that turned to dust shatters a quiet morning and brings Steve racing from Okoye's study to comfort her.

Rocket turns to anger in his grief, and gets under Shuri's feet in the lab, making ridiculous suggestions and building things he keeps insisting are bombs. No one realises the profound reality of his grief until they find him sobbing over a snapped twig.

Thor has barely left the room he chose to sleep in. Everyone knows he's lost the last piece of his life, after he told them Loki is dead, pain in his eyes, everything he had gone thanks to Thanos. His weapon waits, but they know there's nothing anyone can do.

Nebula slowly, painfully, tells them the full story of what happened beyond earth. Her sister dead, her team turned to dust, Thanos taking the stones as he wanted and decimating anyone who stood in his way. She asks them what chance they have, and no one has an answer.

Rhodey can only think of everyone gone, their terrified faces turning to dust. He can only wonder why he is the one left alive. Why this group of shattered individuals are important. What chance a broken group who rely on tech for their powers can possibly have against the gauntlet.

They've only had a week since Thanos tore into their world and ripped it apart. How can they carry this weight for a lifetime?

* * *

A weak wail of an alarm echoes through the palace, drawing everyone into the main rooms, Okoye running for the blinking screens. "Unidentified aircraft outside our airspace," she says, and turns to the comms to ask, "Who are you and what do you want?"

"This is SHIELD quinjet F500W2 requesting landing clearance," comes a familiar voice, and Natasha looks up from her own hands, recognising that sequence of numbers and letters. She said it a hundred times herself, before she was an Avenger. Before the world was torn apart.

"Clint?"

"Nat?"

"Let him in!" she says, getting to her feet, finding herself animated for the first time since she stared down at Vision's body.

She finds a shattered man on their doorstep, his skin so pale he's almost grey, stumbling towards her. "They...Laura...the kids...gone," he croaks out, and horror drops cold into her chest. "I couldn't find anyone. I tried, God I tried, SHIELD's been decimated, Fury's gone, he turned to dust like my  _kids_ , Nat, they're  _dead_..."

"I know," she says, as he clings to her, shaking violently. "I'm just...I'm glad you're okay."

"What the hell happened?" he asks, breathless with the effort of trying not to cry. "How could anyone do this?!"

"Thanos," she says, and his eyes go wide. "He got all six stones. He...we thought we could stop him getting the mind stone, but he...Vision's gone, Clint."

"Oh my God," he says, and releases her, wiping his eyes, looking around behind her. "Where's Wanda? Is she okay? God, I talked to her a week before all this and she was with him, I could hear him, she loves him so much, is she okay?"

"Clint." He looks at her, and his face starts to crumple, he's shaking his head and tears are burning behind her eyes to have to tell him this, to make him lose someone else. "Clint, Wanda, she...she's dead."

"No," he breathes, and she has to nod, watching the tears fill his eyes. "No, no, that's not fair, she's one of the powerful ones, she can't be gone, she can't be dead, you're just all playing a trick on me, this is a nightmare, wake me up...wake me  _up_ , Nat,  _please_..."

She can only hold him while he cries, when Steve comes wandering out of the palace to help her carry Clint, buckling under the weight of grief, up to the room where everyone sits day after day, staring into space in silence. Where they all cry together.

* * *

Okoye has gone to reassure her soldiers who remain alive, and Steve sits alone, staring into nothing. Seeing Thanos rip the mind stone from Vision's head while they were all helpless. Seeing Bucky crumbling to dust. Seeing Wanda letting the wind take her. Seeing Okoye's horrified expression as T'Challa disappeared. Seeing Rhodey frantically searching the bushes for Sam. Seeing Tony shattered and grieving.

Tony himself wanders into the room, a shadow of who he used to be, and sits down opposite Steve. They stare at each other for a moment, before Tony finally says, "Did you think this was going to happen?"

"Never," Steve says, folding his arms. "Not like this. Millions of people dead,  _billions_ , and we couldn't do anything but stand by and watch."

"So much for Earth's mightiest heroes," Tony says miserably, and Steve grits his teeth. "Why us? Why are we the ones left alive?"

"I don't know," Steve says. "Thanos is playing with us. Maybe he wants to break us."

"I think he succeeded," Tony says. "Everyone's gone. All our heavy-hitters. They're all dead, and what are we supposed to do?"

"I don't  _know_ , Tony!" Steve snaps, anger rushing to the surface rather than sadness. "Maybe if you hadn't let the Accords split us all up we could've seen this coming and prepared and everyone wouldn't be dead!"

"I warned you about a bigger threat years ago, Rogers!" Tony shouts, tears in his eyes. "I saw it, on the other side of that portal in New York. I saw what Thanos had, and none of you believed me." His anger seems to fade away as soon as it came, and he says, "We can't blame anyone but ourselves for not being prepared. If only-"

"It's too late for if onlys," Steve says, and there's a lump in his throat, choking him. "I don't know what we're supposed to do."

"So many people are dead," Tony says, and he looks so sad. "Strange said we had to do it like this. He sacrificed himself for this. It must be right."

"It's my fault," Steve says suddenly. "That everyone's dead. If I had organised better, if I'd watched them, it all would've been  _fine_. I should've kept everyone together."

"It's no one's fault but Thanos," Tony says, hatred burning behind his eyes. "He killed everyone. He killed his own  _daughter_ , he's a madman. He has to be stopped."

"With  _what_?!" Steve asks desperately. "All we have is us. All our most powerful people turned to dust."

"We can do it," Tony says, suddenly decisive. "We're the goddamn Avengers, Rogers. And we couldn't defend all those people, but you can be damn sure we'll avenge them."

"The six of us are still here," Steve says, so slowly. "Six years later. We're together."

"Together," Tony echoes, and gives Steve the slightest smile.

It's not grief that makes the tears come for Steve. The lump in his throat bursts and he doubles over sobbing at the realisation that it matters that they're together. There's still connection and camaraderie alive in this broken group of people.

They can still stop Thanos.

 


End file.
